The stock is also doing as well as much healthier competitors Macy's (M) and Dillard's (DDS).

Who's the Boss? The catalyst for Monday's move was a classic case of Wall Street celebrating what appears to be bad news. JPMorgan's Boss still has a "neutral" rating on the stock.

And his price target for the end of 2015 is $11 -- just 3% higher than current levels.

J.C. Penney will have to close more stores if customers keep leaving empty-handed.

Boss was mainly optimistic about the possibility of JCP increasing its profits by getting rid of a LOT more stores than the 33 it already announced it was closing back in January.

Boss estimates that if the retailer shuttered 300 of its nearly 1,100 stores, that could increase earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization by $450 million. And that could justify a stock price of more than $20 a share.

JCP: Just Can't Profit. Let's be blunt. JCP is still a mess.

And while new-ish CEO Myron Ullman is doing his best to repair the damage created by his predecessor Ron Johnson -- who was actually lured away from Apple (AAPL) to replace Ullman in the first place -- he has a long way to go.

Johnson tried to make JCP cool. Like Apple. But nobody shopped at JCP because they thought the retailer was at the forefront of the latest fashion trends. They just wanted cheap pairs of St. John's Bay jeans. That's not the worst thing in the world.

Yes, Ullman is getting rid of some of the store-within-a-store concepts that Johnson created. Ullman is also bringing back promotions and coupons, two things that Johnson curiously viewed as the equivalent of a four-letter curse word.

Sales are even growing again at J.C. Penney. That's a good thing. But it's a slow pace.

Analysts are forecasting a 4.6% increase in annual revenue this year to $12.4 billion. That is nearly 30% lower than what the retailer reported in 2012.

Finally, it's hard to get excited about JCP just because it might cut costs.

Just ask shareholders of Sears (SHLD) and RadioShack (RSH) how that's working out.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.

"When it fits, you feel it," is the strange (and slightly dirty) new slogan for J.C. Penney.

But is the struggling retailer's stock finally a good fit for your portfolio? Shares certainly are feeling the love MORE

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.

On paper, it was a really tough quarter for J.C. Penney (JCP), but CEO Ron Johnson was successful in convincing investors that the company is moving in the right direction.

The retailer, which launched an overhauled pricing strategy in February, lost $147 million during the second quarter, nearly three times more than analysts were expecting. Sales were extremely weak, falling 23% overall from a year earlier, and same store sales, a key gauge MORE